It’s been a busy summer here in the Financial Panther household – and perhaps never as busy for us as it was last month. My wife and I closed on our new house at the beginning of July, which meant moving a decade’s worth of stuff from our old house. We’re also renting out our old house, which means we’ve been spending time between two houses – creating our new home in one and preparing our old house for renters.
The busy schedule means I didn’t have as much time to do side hustles or work on the blog. That being said, I still surprised myself by cracking the $1,000 barrier last month. It’s not a huge amount of money by any means – but it’s still a decent amount that can make a difference for a lot of people.
Here’s a look at all the side hustle/gig economy income I was able to earn in July 2021:
Side Hustle Income for July 2021
- Airbnb/Rental Income: $0
- Rover: $102
- DoorDash/Uber Eats/Grubhub: $643.30
- Shipt/Instacart: $0
- Wag: $0
- Selling Trash Finds/Flipping: $113.52
- WeGoLook: $0
- TaskRabbit: $0
- ProductTube: $23
- Gigwalk/EasyShift/Field Agent/Merchandiser/Observa/IVueIt/Pickl: $44
- Google Opinion Rewards/Surveys On The Go/1Q: $18.42
- Secret Shopping: $41
- ProductLab: $12.25
- ReceiptPal/Receipt Hog/Fetch/Coinout/Amazon Shopper Panel/NCP ReCap: $10.50
- Medium: $10.03
Total Side Hustle Income for July 2021 = $1,018.02
In July, I ended up earning a little over $1,000 from 10 different categories of side hustles. I find this pretty good considering how busy I was last month.
Here’s a more in-depth look at my earnings in each category.
Airbnb/Rental Income: $0
I haven’t included this category in a while but thought it was worth including this month to provide an update for future income reports. As regular readers know, my wife and I used to rent out a spare room in our house on Airbnb. It was a great way to house hack – the income from Airbnb covered our mortgage most months. We stopped doing Airbnb last year when we had our first kid.
Since then, we’ve moved into a new house, but decided to keep the old house too. I know I could turn the house into an Airbnb property and do pretty well with it, but ultimately decided to rent it as a traditional rental since I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of cleaning and dealing with guests. Our old house is located near a large university, so it caters primarily to students.
This will be my first time being a landlord and I’m still thinking about whether I’ll include that income in these side hustle reports or treat them as a separate form of income. Most likely, I’ll treat it separately, but it’s worth noting that I’m now adding rental income into my overall income mix.
Rover Income: $102
Rover demand is definitely picking up these days. My new house is in an area that sees higher demand for dog sitters too, so I expect to be pretty busy with dogsitting over the next few months.
I ended up watching one dog and one cat last month. The dog was one that we’d watched before – a French Bulldog that we enjoy having around. The cat was new to our home and was super friendly.
One thing about doing Rover is that our neighborhood and house isn’t the type of place you’d expect to find someone dog sitting. Our last home was pretty modest and didn’t raise too many eyebrows. We now live in an expensive home in a fancy neighborhood and it definitely seems like some people are surprised when they drop off their dog at my house.
DoorDash/Uber Eats/Grubhub Income: $643.30
July was a slower month for me on the delivery front, primarily because I was busy with moving to a new house and getting my old house ready to rent. Still, I have way too much fun doing deliveries – especially since I get to do them with all of my different electric micromobility vehicles (Himiway Escape, RadCity, and Varla Eagle One Scooter).
Here’s what I earned with each delivery app in July:
My hourly rate was definitely down in July, with my earnings ranging from $26 to $36 per hour. I think demand drops a bit in the summer since more people are out of town. And we’ll probably never get back to those pandemic earnings when I was regularly pulling in $40 to $50 per hour.
Still, I can make do with earning in the $30 per hour range. As long as I stick to prime hours, I can typically pull that off without too much issue.
For more info about DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub, be sure to check out my in-depth posts about each:
- DoorDash Dasher: What It’s Like Delivering For DoorDash in 2021
- Uber Eats Driver: Delivering For Uber Eats In 2021
- Grubhub Delivery Driver: What It’s Like Delivering For Grubhub In 2021
Trash/Flipping Income: $113.52
I sold a few random things in July, mainly old furniture that we didn’t want to take with us to our new house. I listed up these pieces of furniture on Facebook Marketplace and they were all sold within a day.
One interesting thing I sold last month was a stack of Airbnb magazines. I got these magazines for free from Airbnb and have had them sitting on a shelf in our guestroom for the past 3 years or so. When I was cleaning things up, I stumbled on these magazines, and rather than throw them away, I checked eBay to see if they had any resale value. I ended up listing up the magazines on eBay and someone paid $21 plus shipping for those magazines. Not bad for something that probably would have been trash to most people.
ProductTube Income: $23
ProductTube remained fairly steady. I haven’t been getting as many good gigs, but still got a few gigs that were worth doing. ProductTube pays via Amazon gift cards, so this money went straight into my Amazon balance.
Gigwalk/EasyShift/Field Agent/Merchandiser/Observa/IVueIt/Pickl Income: $44
This month, I earned income from two of these apps – Gigwalk and IVueIt. I made $3 from Field Agent and $41 from IVueIt.
The Gigwalk assignment required me to take a picture of a product at a convenience store. When I arrived, the convenience store was no longer there – replaced with a law office. All I had to do was snap a photo of the location and I got paid $3 for my time. It worked out well because it was on my bike route to my son’s daycare.
IVueIt worked out well for me last month also. Two of the gigs I did are close to my new house. It looks like these gigs pop up every few weeks, so that could be a consistent source of income for me. The other gigs I did were nearby also. They only take a few minutes to complete, so the time spent to earn this money is worth it.
IVueIt is a good app that I think is worth having on your phone. If you’re interested, be sure to check out my in-depth IVueIt review, where I go over how this app works.
Google Opinion Rewards/Surveys On The Go/1Q Income: $18.42
July was a solid month with these short survey apps. Here’s what I made with each app.
- Google Opinion Rewards: $0
- Surveys On The Go: $16.42
- 1Q: $2
My survey income was up this month because I hit the $10 cashout mark for Surveys On The Go. I find that most months, I can get a few surveys that take a few minutes to complete and that pay decently. The rest, I purposefully disqualify myself and collect my 10 cents (Surveys On The Go pays 10 cents even if you don’t qualify for a survey).
Google Opinion Rewards has been down lately. I seem to go through stretches where I don’t get any surveys from them, although I don’t know why that happens.
Secret Shopping Income: $41 (plus free food)
It seems like most months, I’m able to earn around $40 from secret shopping. For the most part, I don’t actually care about making money from secret shopping. I do it mainly for the free food, but if I can earn some money too, that’s not bad either.
For more info about secret shopping and how it works, check out this post, Restaurant Secret Shopper Jobs – A Strategy To Eat For Free And Hack Your Food Expenses.
ProductLab Income: $12.25
ProductLab remains consistent every month. I submit a screenshot of my weekly earnings on DoorDash and Uber Eats and make $3 or so each week. It takes me 3 seconds to do this, so it’s basically free money to me.
ReceiptPal/Receipt Hog/Fetch/CoinOut/Amazon Shopper Panel/NCP ReCap Income: $10.50
I think at some point, I need to write a dedicated post about how these receipt apps work. The short of it is that they essentially allow me to monetize the receipts I’m already collecting.
This month, I cashed out $10.50 from Amazon Shopper Panel. This is a must-have app for everyone. I earn at least $10 per month each month, just for taking pictures of 10 receipts each month. It’s one of the easier ways I earn money.
Medium Income: $10.03
I’ve put Medium on the backburner since I found myself spending more time on Medium than it was probably worth. Even though I didn’t publish any content on Medium in July, I still made $10 from the posts I’d already written. If I had hundreds of articles on there, I could probably make some decent passive income.
At some point, I’ll probably go back to Medium, as I find it to be an interesting place to write. I just need more time if I’m going to do that.
And that concludes the July 2021 Side Hustle Report!
This side hustle report is a little shorter than usual, as I’m already late getting it out and figured it was worth sharing the numbers as soon as possible. If you want additional detail on anything I wrote here, please feel free to ask in the comments.
If you’re interested in seeing what I’ve earned in previous months, please check out my past side hustle reports. I also have a post titled The Ultimate List of Gig Economy Apps that has almost every gig economy app I’ve ever used or heard about.
Congrats on the July 2021 side hustle of $1k+! Further shows how hard work and dedication turn into great results. Keep grinding to FI!
Hello. Thank you for another great post on side-gigs. Just FYI, NCP ReCap got rolled into CoinOut, so it’s gone bye-bye.
Would love to know more details about your mystery shops for the month! Seems like regional differences can be pretty incredible.
Crushing it! I’m going to look into some of those secret shopping places. I’ve used Coyle before but the reporting requirements were a bit much. Still, great way to get a free meal!